A week at home, a week at work

Written July 2, 2007 in Personal, Scholarship

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As of today, I’ve officially been home for a week, and working for a week. For anyone who didn’t know, your’s truly was mad enough to start work immediately after touchdown, getting the local label of ‘Siao Kia’ pretty early in the week.

I won’t hide the fact that I’m a civil servant. In fact, I’m proud of it. I’m learning the ropes up in the Ministry of Education, observing how decisions are being made, and to be a policy maker. Well, sort of. I’m currently writing a paper on some personnel related matters which I rather not talk about. Not because I’m supposed to keep it a secret or anything, but I rather not bring too much of work’s work into this place.

Eh? Why not working at BV? Well, I have no idea as well, but I’m working off site in a place called School Cluster Centre. I asked the staff on my first day why they won’t based in the HQ building, someone told me this, "Aiyah, in case got earthquake in Singapore then everyone in HQ die, still got people off site to run the education system mah. If not all die together then education system sure to panic one." Then he winked. I ALMOST believed him. WAH LAO.

I decided not to blog too much over the first few days at work because I wanted to see how the whole thing would work out before I started condemning the system. I was this close to damning the system. THIS CLOSE. |<->|. I practically spent my first day(s) learning the most important language of the Singapore Government - Acronyms. Ready?

SPO, GROW, PBL, PDL, EO, EXO, GEO1, GEO2, SEO, SUPT, CONNECT, SWC, WLH, SD, SDWZ, ST, STT, MTT, BT, HOD, P, VP, VPA, VPT, SH, LH, HODLP, EPMS, PM2S, AES, AM, OM, SQC, SEA, SAA, BPA, CHERISH, PDA.

It was like decoding a message in the army, looking up and asking, ‘Eh, what the hell does XYZ mean?’ Maybe they don’t want the Malaysians to know what we are doing!

Then I was close to falling asleep on my ‘desk’ after a hard day’s work. Jetlag.

But that was the first few days when everything seems like a haze, when you really had no idea what you were supposed to do, and no one around seemed to know what you needed to do. But not now. Now work’s a haze as I run about the schools to conduct interviews with the school leadership and teachers. Busy like a bee as I return to the office everyday compiling what I learnt into my daily brief, all in preparation for writing my final recommendation paper, which will actually be read by someone important enough to make some fundamental changes.

I will writing more as the days go by, but to sum it all, the more I work here, the more faith I have in the Singapore system I guess. Really.

Tags: Personal

5 comments on ' A week at home, a week at work '

Hi,

I got your comment on my blog. I actually deleted it as my first instinct was to ignore MOE personnel. However, upon thinking about it I changed my mind.

So if you still want to ask me questions, you can contact me at the email given.

Either way, I hope you enjoy working at MOE and I hope you will remember that at the end of the day, the students are the ones who matter the most. And we teachers don’t really dislike MOE HQ all that much. Really.

Written by Piper on July 03, 2007 at 9:54am
what about interviewing the students?

Written by yanjie on July 03, 2007 at 12:28pm
naima!

well, whatever i’m looking at has nothing to do with the students. seeing how things work from here has really given me a brand new insight on how things work, and where the screwups really begin.

maybe a clarification. i would rather not talk about policy matters on this blog, but i would like to discuss insights, experiences and what i learnt, especially the lighter side of things. i leave the smacking and wacking to the other sites, not that i agree with them though. as i said, seeing the other side of the coin helps. i never understood some things when i worked as a teacher. i hope no one who reads any of my posts see it as an official line on XYZ matter, cos i actually don’t believe in BSing.

Written by Ivan on July 03, 2007 at 2:57pm
woah cool stuff man! at least u’re enjoying urself in singapore…i want to eat crab!!!

Written by royce on July 05, 2007 at 10:02am
ultimately, even policies that affect the teachers only(like EPMS, NPL) will have an effect on the students. Hence, I think there is a need to hear from the students, of course, not what they think of the policy/system, but to find out their state to draw conclusions on the “thing”.

From what I have seen, students have the most accute sense when it comes to judging the school and teachers. They can tell whether a school is good or not or whether a teacher truely cares for them, without needing to pin point to any reasons or incidents, and yet, are right most of the time. Perhaps they are better at picking up accidental clues subconciously.

Written by yanjie on July 07, 2007 at 6:29pm